There are a variety of reasons why a patient may not take prescribed doses of medication at a required time. This may have serious consequences for the patient. One such reason may be the result of a patient having a poor memory. Another reason may be that a routine followed by the patient is interrupted so that the need for the administration of the medication is forgotten. Such interruptions may be random, however it has been noticed that there is sometimes a recurring pattern of non-compliance and it is then advisable to investigate the reason for the non-compliance so that steps can be taken to avoid it in future.
Non-compliance of a patient is apparent when a pharmacist notices that, not for The first time, a used package of blisters containing prescribed medication doses and intended to cover a period of use, such as a week, is being returned by a particular patient with some of the blisters unopened. Should the pharmacist find the time to compare the used blister packages returned by a particular patient with one another, it might be noticed that the same blisters on different blister packages are being left unopened on a significant number of occasions. However a busy pharmacist may be disinclined to spend the time involved in searching for a recurring pattern of non-compliance as the investigation involved takes time and the incidence of non-complying blister packages having a recurring pattern of unopened blisters is relatively small.